


a mortal heart

by laikaspeaks



Series: the reach of our hearts [1]
Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Character Study, Familiars, Gen, Grief, Unicorns, bullshit ye olde english bits, headcanons, i guess, mentions of character death (diana's mom)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 17:44:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12113922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laikaspeaks/pseuds/laikaspeaks
Summary: "I'll make sure magic stays, no matter what!"A year and a day after her mother passed, Diana summoned her mother's familiar for the first time.





	a mortal heart

_ “Unicorns walk the leylines as mortal roads, and know not time or the bounds of flesh. How does one tame the Unicorn? By what cunning does one bind the air itself or contain the sea within a wine-glass?” -  _ On Unicorn familiars, as recorded by Lady Dorcas Cavendish.

* * *

A year and a day after her mother passed, Diana managed to summon her mother’s familiar for the first time.

Trees of black stone circled the sunken stage and served as pillars, carved with such care that it was only the lack of magic that told Diana they weren’t once living trees. Their leafless branches tangled overhead in patterns ornate as lace.

Summoned water rippled and roiled under her feet, and he lept from the spectral wave, his mane and tail streaming behind him white as sea foam. His sides heaved for air, tottering on slim legs. A sob of relief died in Diana’s throat. His lips parted to bare long white fangs, yellow eyes rolling wildly, elongated pupils looking at nothing and everything.

He spotted her and her breath caught in her chest when he stumbled closer. Then his eyes cleared in recognition, a plaintive sound rattling in his throat rising and rising until it seemed like many voices, like a stable of horses on fire.

It took every ounce of her stubbornness not to run… but truly, she wasn’t sure if she could move her legs.

The beast reared back on his hind legs, and a strange language blasted inside her skull. She would remember them until the day she died, those words that echoed and died on the snow-covered tombs. All she knew then was that he was in pain as he beat the air with his hooves. 

“Boreas!” Diana shouted. Fear coiled heavy and sick like the weight of one of her aunt’s snakes, but in her mind she had another image of this fierce creature: her mother pressing her exhausted face into his neck, her fingers gripped in his long white mane when her strength failed. He had always come when her mom called, always. “Boreas, calm down!”

Her mother’s lessons and her own studies came to her in a jumble, fragments that were impossible to untangle. This was her birthright, but she couldn’t think past his screaming. Was this how it was for everyone? In her scattered thoughts, one thing rose to the surface. It was a comfort through her many failed attempts, and it came to her again in her fear:  _ A believing heart is your magic. _

Diana took a deep breath and planted her feet in the trampled snow.

She drew a little magic into her open palm, extending her open hand to Boreas even as he bucked and screamed. The magic unfurled from her palm like a fern, soft, searching tendrils blue as a summer sky. It was the greeting from a human to a unicorn, offering her magic - her heart - up for inspection.

He froze. That was the only word for it, the way he dropped to all fours, his head turning so that he could regard her with one fierce eye. If it weren’t for his labored breathing and the snowflakes drifting between them, time might have stopped.

Boreas drew closer, his hooves leaving steaming prints in the snow.

Diana’s head was even with the unicorn’s shoulders, and she was horrifically aware of the oldest stories about unicorns. Even for a house like hers, they were less tamed than gentled. They couldn’t be contained by any chain or enchantment.  _ Unicorns are the purest embodiment of magic,  _ some distant Cavendish had scrawled in their tattered journal, with narrow, spidery writing that strained her eyes,  _ without pity or remorse, like a storm at sea, like death. _

She bit her lip hard on a whimper, leaving her hand hanging between them even when he exhaled over her hand in a cloud of mist.

A mouth with teeth as sharp as needles opened unnaturally wide, enveloping her outstretched hand. Diana’s entire body coiled with tension. She didn’t dare to even breathe. The jaws closed down, and instead of pain and blood, blunt teeth pressed gently against flesh. When the unicorn pulled away, Diana became aware of two things. The first neat semi-circle of silvery marks seared into both sides of her hand, like long-healed scars left behind by sharp teeth. The other was that Boreas’ eyes were dark brown once more. His soft muzzle brushed against her cheek, ruffled her curls in a way that was so familiar.

Diana threw her arms around his neck with a sob, unable to suppress the way her shoulders shook. She could feel him shaking as well, his hide twitching as if worried by biting flies.

“You are pure of heart,” Boreas said gently, unsteady and painfully young, “you are worthy of your mother’s legacy.”

Her hands clenched in his mane. He was wrong, so wrong. No matter how she pretended, she was… she was so angry. She thought of her Aunt and her cousins and their fake sickly-sweet smiles, of photos taken down from walls, of rearranged furniture and long, long silences that couldn’t be filled. It burned inside her sometimes, until she felt sick. But before she could speak Boreas cut her off.

“- you would deny it?”

She turned her face against his neck. Her face burned, her chest was tight with shame. “I’m not.”

Boreas let out a small huff, slowly lowering himself to the ground and shepherding Diana to sit beside him. Slowly his breathing subsided, the rise and fall of his side pulling her back from the edge of that precipice. “It isn’t perfection we unicorns require, my heart.”

It hit her like a punch to the chest. She found she was too breathless to protest, and instead the pain settled in her gut like a stone. If her tears turned to ice on her cheeks, it wouldn’t have been a surprise. Boreas only called her mother that.

“Only hope. It’s the one gift humans possess that we do not. Unicorns are not tame beasts, but by binding my soul to a witch I become more than I am alone. It is the nature of things. We are greater together.”

Diana leaned against his side, grateful for the fact that his magic protected her from the cold. Her fingers were already working through his mane, combing out tangles and weaving in little braids. Setting things in order calmed her, and when she breathed she could almost catch the ghost of summer wildflowers on the burning-cold air. She and her mother twined them in his mane and tail when she was small, Bernadette gentling her small, clumsy hands.

Boreas shifted against her, as if uncertain to do with her silence. “I hope that one day, you will  lean on me as well, little heart. I would be your strength as I was hers.”

Her mother’s hands flashed through her memory, gently clipping healing herbs and braiding Boreas’ mane and cupping Diana’s face so that she could press kisses to her forehead. It hurt, _ it hurt _ , but… it was her mom. As close as she would get ever again.

“Why didn’t you come?” The words spilled out before she could stop them. “Why didn’t you come? She called you.”

She tried so hard to summon him for her mom. Over and over, but her spells were never quite right… and now it was too late. It wasn’t fair.

“I could not.” His voice was a whisper, even inside her head.

_ “Why?” _ What reason could he possibly have?

“As Bernadette waned so did I, my heart. She could not call and I could not go, though I felt my heart waver.”

His head lowered, shoulders hunching as if against a cold wind. Sadness came off him like something she could touch. That was - it made her feel better. There was someone else that remembered her mom, that was sad that she was gone. Not because she was special or important, but because she was Bernadette. “My strength alone is no longer enough to leave the leylines under my own power. Magic fades from this world, and so do I.”

That was almost enough to make her forget to breathe. Magic? Gone forever? Her mom’s magic was so much her mom’s touch that she couldn’t separate the two: spells that soothed coughs and bad dreams and skinned knees. There was Chariot's magic too, all fire and flight and endless possibility. One all she knew of love and the other her first taste of wonder, and _both_ _were_ _ magic. _

“I won’t let it!” Her fist smacked against his shoulder, startling a snort out of the unicorn. Determination burned inside her, dark-edged with grief. If magic died it would be like losing her mom all over again, like every light in the night sky guttered out. "I'll make sure magic stays, no matter what!"

She half expected him to argue, to try and make her still and quiet, like everyone wanted her to be. Instead he lowered his head so that his eyes were level with hers, and she could feel magic running through him as if she were standing on the edge of the sea. “Of this I have no doubt, Diana Cavendish.”

* * *

_ “How does one tame a Unicorn? Give it the count of mortal days, a chain of Time wrap’d round its neck. Only then will a Unicorn know mortal grief, and thus gain a mortal heart.” _

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be completely honest with you, this was another instance of "lai was sick of looking at it and posted it anyway", so here ya go.


End file.
